"Spontaneity..................."

My four day weekend, what Kentucky’s public school system refers to as “Fall Break”, just happened to coincide with my seventy-first birthday. My youngest daughter celebrates her forty-first this coming Tuesday, so we all did dinner together at a local restaurant yesterday; but, other than that, it was just another tick of the clock. No big deal; and, to tell the truth, I prefer it that way. This old man does not do well with crowds, even small ones, and all the more so if, for any reason, he’s the center of attention. Conversation makes me nervous, my tongue and my brain seemingly not well connected at such times. Being asked to pray over a meal or to lead others in a petition about whatever is something to be avoided. Talking with God isn’t religious ritual to me, a few words mumbled before breaking bread, a communal “speech” covering congregational requests. It was always easy to sing, closing my eyes and forgetting everybody else was there while becoming one with Him in the lyrics; but being “appointed” to be everybody else’s voice in a matter somehow isn’t the same. Then again, bringing the men at the mission or the kids at the Center into an altar call is no problem, the moment, itself, somehow simply placed in His hands and allowed to “happen”. I believe in that. The Holy Ghost cannot be programmed, cannot be manipulated, cannot be formulated. He just “is”; and it seems to me that somewhere in this we have lost that truth. That’s not a popular opinion, of course, but to each their own. Blow out the candles. Enough said…